Audio Library

The AI grace period is over - ROI in months not years Alex Adamopoulos, Chairman and CEO of Emergn, discusses the results of the company’s new research, which reveals that enterprise leaders now expect measurable returns from AI investments within months, not years and patience is rapidly running out. The findings show that AI has shifted from behind the scenes pilots to a core driver of revenue, with zero organisations reporting that they remain uninvolved in AI initiatives.

Edge observability takes centre stage Arturo Oliver, Sr. Director of Market Strategy & Analyst Relations at ScienceLogic, discusses why the edge is becoming the new frontier for observability- and what that shift means for enterprises trying to operate safely, intelligently, and at scale. Arturo highlights the key drivers behind edge observability, explains how organisations can leverage observability at the edge to extract actionable intelligence from fragmented edge telemetry, and why it is becoming foundational for autonomous, distributed systems.

AI - is it time for a rethink? Claire Keelan, UK MD at Onnec, is warning that the UK will fall short of its AI ambitions and data centre expansion targets, unless it tackles the growing workforce shortage by tapping into underused talent – particularly women and flexible workers. With AI demand forecast to drive a fivefold increase in UK data centre capacity by 2030, and increasing investment from major tech providers, Claire says the sector won’t keep up unless it modernises how it attracts, trains, and mobilises people.

Spark set to revolutionise the IT service desk Denis Schertenleib, Nexthink’s Senior Director of Product, believes that the IT service desk won’t survive the next five years and that agentic AI will be the future of IT support. He also discusses Nexthink’s newly launched personal AI agent, powered by DEX data, which resolves common IT issues in seconds and delivers a 77% first-contact resolution rate.

Delivering sustainable decommissioning and circular economy outcomes Rob Bolton, CEO at n2s Bioscope, explains how n2s has formed a new three-year partnership with NTT DATA to support Virgin Media O2 across all UK data centre sites, focusing on responsible decommissioning, resource recovery and circular economy integration. The contract will see over 40,000 IT assets sustainably processed - reducing waste, recovering critical materials, and help Virgin Media O2 achieve its energy efficiency and carbon reduction targets.

Observability investments increase Joshua Clay, Senior Director Solutions Engineering at Dynatrace, discusses the findings of the company’s ‘The State of Observability Report 2025’, which reveals that while AI adoption is accelerating, concerns about reliability and trust make it challenging to transition initiatives from concept to production. To address this, business leaders are prioritising observability solutions to scale their AI projects, with more than two-thirds (70%) saying observability budgets have increased in the past year.

Cybersecurity - as easy as MFA? Michael Downs, VP, global sales at SecurEnvoy, discusses the importance of Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) as a crucial part of any effective cybersecurity strategy.

Work AI Institute delivering real-world lessons for successful AI adoption Work AI leader Glean has launched the Work AI Institute, a first-of-its-kind research initiative - supported by faculty from Stanford, Harvard, Berkeley, Notre Dame, and others - dedicated to decoding what actually drives results when companies commit to operating with AI at the core of their businesses. As part of that launch, the institute has released a new report, founded by Glean and led by Stanford’s Bob Sutton and organisational psychologist Rebecca Hinds, PhD, which reveals that most failed enterprise AI pilots weren’t technology problems, but instead, coordination problems. In this interview, Rebecca discusses the report’s findings in detail, providing many great insights as to the best approaches for companies to take to ensure successful AI adoption.

CISO report reveals the extent of the cybersecurity challenge in the age of AI CEO Dave Gerry, and Dr David Brumley, Chief AI and Science Officer, both at Bugcrowd, discuss the findings of the recent “Inside the Mind of a CISO 2025: Resilience in an AI-Accelerated World” report, designed to serves as a vital guide for security leaders navigating exponential attack surface growth due to AI. It empowers Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs) with critical intelligence, enabling them to make data-driven decisions about risk profiles, resource allocation, and strategic security investments. Furthermore, the report emphasises the crucial role of collective intelligence and continuous offensive security testing as the foundation of organisational resilience against increasingly complex threats.

Sustainability and advanced storage performance go hand in hand Eric Herzog, Chief Marketing Officer at Infinidat, outlines how and why Infinidat has seen outstanding success with the launch of the InfiniBox® G4 Family, creating a new foundation for the future with enterprise storage solutions that perform up to 2.5X better than the previous generation. He also explains how the family marks a clear step towards creating enterprise storage solutions that operate at the intersection of environmental responsibility while also ensuring a sustained business advantage.

Survey reveals AI readiness gap Nicolas Leszczynski, Principal Solutions Engineer at Riverbed Technology, discusses the findings of the company’s 2025 Future of IT Operations in the AI Era report. Despite record investments, only 12% of AI projects are fully deployed, caused by gaps in implementation, confidence, and data quality. Simultaneously, tool consolidation, OpenTelemetry adoption and resilient, cost-effective IT infrastructure are emerging as critical enablers of AI success.

Helping to scale the next generation of optical connectivity Benoit Fleury, CPO Business Director at Corning, explains how Corning is collaborating with GlobalFoundries to develop detachable fibre connector solutions for the GF Fotonix™ silicon photonics platform. The latest solution, a glass-waveguide based edge-coupler compatible with GF Fotonix’s v-grooves, is designed to meet the growing demands of AI data centres for high bandwidth and power-efficient optical connectivity. Other coupling mechanisms are also being developed, including a vertically-coupled detachable fibre-to-PIC solution – demonstrating Corning and GlobalFoundries’ combined ability to produce multiple forms of co-packaged PIC-to-fibre connectivity.

High optimism for AI in cybersecurity - with human oversight Dan Schiappa, President of Technology and Services at Arctic Wolf, discusses the results of the company’s 2025 AI report, which reveals that AI is rapidly becoming a cornerstone of modern cybersecurity, but benefits from human expertise to be truly effective. As Dan explains, the insights from the report give leaders the data they need to make smart, targeted investments, deploying AI where it can deliver measurable outcomes, cut through alert noise, and help security teams work with greater speed, accuracy, and confidence.

Axians and Nokia deliver next-generation networking solutions Chris Gilmour, CTO of Axians UK, explains how Axians, the ICT brand of VINCI Energies, and Nokia are deepening their strategic collaboration to drive the next phase of communications infrastructure and mobile network development in the EMEA region. The combined solutions are targeted to meet the growing demand for high-performing connectivity and digitalisation across industries. Axians and Nokia will now scale their joint efforts to support European organizations with resilient, high-performance networking solutions. The collaboration will focus on delivering next-generation connectivity, including optical transport, data centre networking, IP routing, private 5G, fixed network access, and secure communications technologies – with both AI and quantum computing driving the need for IT infrastructure innovation.

Q-Day - are you ready? Paul Savill, Global Practice Leader for Network and Edge at Kyndryl. Spends his time helping major organisations modernise their infrastructure to make the most of AI, strengthen security and prepare for the disruption of quantum computing. Here he discusses the approach of Q-Day, the point when quantum computers will be able to break today’s encryption. Despite the urgency, only 39% of leaders believe their IT infrastructure is ready for threats such as quantum enabled cyber-attacks. Paul shares insights as to how organisations can prepare both for the current challenges around AI adoption and the prospect of quantum computing.

AI pacesetters likely to increase their business advantage in the near future Rob Lay, Cisco, discusses the results from the third annual Cisco AI Readiness Index. A small but consistent group of companies surveyed — the ‘Pacesetters,’ about 13% of organizations for the last three years — outperform their peers across every measure of AI. The Pacesetters’ sustained advantage indicates a new form of resilience: a disciplined, system-level approach that balances strategic drivers with the data and infrastructure needed to keep pace with AI’s accelerating evolution. Rob explains what sets apart the Pacesetters and also offers advice to the majority of organisations who are caught in the gap between AI ambition and operational readiness.

Meshing matters in the DC Keith Sullivan, Director of Strategic Innovation at AFL, explains what meshing means in the context of data centres and why it is particularly important when it comes to GPU-intensive, AI compute workloads. Keith also outlines the common strategies used to implement meshing in a data centre and shares his thoughts as to how meshing will evolve over the next few years, with silicon photonics and co-packaged optics on the horizon.

Metadata emerges as the cornerstone of cyber defence Mark Jow, Gigamon Technical Evangelist, discusses the company’s recent report, “CISO Insights: Recalibrating Risk in the Age of AI”, which reveals how global CISOs are reshaping 2026 cybersecurity strategies as they seek to effectively secure and manage hybrid cloud infrastructure in the AI era. Mark explains that, as AI accelerates digital transformation and intensifies cyberattacks, data visibility and quality have become mission critical to defending hybrid cloud infrastructure. To keep pace, CISOs now need to gain a deeper level of insight, as increasing traffic volumes add complexity.

Fibre overlooked in infrastructure planning Lee Myall, CEO of Neos Networks, outlines how, over the past decade, there’s been a huge amount of investment in last-mile fibre builds, but core fibre networks across the country have received much less attention. Without them, workloads cannot move between data centres, data cannot be trained, and investments stall. The UK has the ambition, the demand and the regional readiness to lead in AI, but, as Lee explains, if we don’t address fibre gaps, we risk losing out on one of the greatest economic opportunities of our generation.

Delivering digital transformation without the elephant sandwich Matthew Irish, General Manager, Digital Services at Apogee Corporation, explains how and why many companies still find the idea of digital transformation overwhelming with multi-year projects that cost a fortune and never seem to end. Too often, businesses try to swallow the entire ‘elephant’ at once, leading to a massive, expensive, company-wide overhaul that creates more chaos than it solves. Matt outlines an alternative, smarter, less stomach-churning way to approach digital transformation. Instead of a huge, high-stakes project, he recommends a step-by-step approach that tackles one process at a time, making it easier to manage, less disruptive, and way more effective.

General disillusionment with GenAI - but (other) AI can help Maxime Vermeir, Senior Director of AI Strategy at ABBYY, discusses the results from ABBYY’s State of Intelligent Automation: GenAI Confessions 2025 survey, which reveals challenges in implementing Generative AI (GenAI) – prompting the use of other AI to improve outputs. He explains that businesses are spending money on GenAI tools that promise more than they can provide and advises that before moving forward with leveraging GenAI tools for agentic AI, companies need to first evaluate their current processes and create a visibility map of their workflow with data analytics tools such as process intelligence.

Make the most out of microgrids David Rimmer, Microgrid Business Leader UK&I at Schneider Electric, outlines the ways in which data centre microgrid deployments can contribute to energy cost savings, energy resilience and independence, and help facilities to become more sustainable.

Agentic AI that benefits all Caroline Monfrais, Global VP Strategy & Transformation, Wipro Consulting, looks at, for all the talk around cohesive AI implementation strategy and the evolution of AI Agents, what needs to be done now so that this technology helps rather than hinders human workers? Caroline shares multiple examples of how organisations, from banking to telecoms, are already using agentic AI as the catalyst to reimagine their businesses.

AI might be here, but quantum computing is looming on the horizon Daniel Thorpe, JLL's Head of Data Center Research, EMEA, outlines the findings of the company’s new "The Future of Quantum Real Estate" report, which details how quantum computing is emerging as the next major technological force, set to profoundly impact real estate – especially the data centre sector – similar to AI's recent revolution. Daniel discusses quantum investments, quantum computing infrastructure requirements, the emergence of global quantum hubs and the likely integration of quantum processing units into existing data centres, leading to hybrid facilities.

The hidden economics of AI: balancing innovation with reality Chris Carreiro, CTO, Park Place Technologies, explains why so many AI ambitions are faltering and how organisations can navigate this complex landscape. Core issues to address include the underestimation of AI's total cost of ownership, flexible strategies to account for potential future compliance costs, managing hidden implementation costs and balancing infrastructure with sustainability. Technology-wise, Chris explains the increasing importance of liquid cooling within the data centre.

Unlocking more personalised customer experiences with AI, RCS, and integrated omnichannel strategies Sophie Cheng, Sinch’s SVP of Product Marketing, discusses the findings of the company’s recent report, the state of customer communications, which explores how brands are adapting their engagement strategies as customer expectations rise, and AI adoption accelerates globally. She explains that the businesses that lead are putting the customer at the heart of their communication strategies, letting them choose how and where they want to connect and using AI, and channels like RCS, to make every interaction smarter, faster, and more meaningful.

Enabling high-performance deep learning applications on edge devices Avi Baum, CTO at Hailo, discusses why AI infrastructure needs are already shifting from centralized to edge, how telcos can evolve and future-proof their business to keep up with that transition, and what’s driving demand for AI at the network edge. Avi also talks through the company’s technology portfolio, including the Hailo-10H, its second-generation AI accelerator featuring powerful generative AI capabilities.

DENALI delivers an exciting new era in fibre-network innovation Meredith Kendrick, Product Line Manager at AFL, explains the company’s DENALI platform – with a particular focus on how it supports increasing fibre density demands in rapidly evolving, GPU-intensive fibre networks, how it helps reduce deployment time and improves infrastructure build ROI, whilst simplifying operations from order to install, and how DENALI balances global performance standards with the need for local compliance and delivery requirements.

Breach silence, attack surface reduction and AI threats top security agenda Nicholas Jackson, Director of Cyber Security Services at Bitdefender, discusses the company’s recent 2025 Cybersecurity Assessment Report, explain that businesses face mounting challenges and pressures as the attack surface expands and becomes harder to defend - from hardening environments and optimising security solutions to navigating regulatory compliance and retaining skilled professionals. He explains that organisations must adopt modern security strategies that address a new reality where adversaries use AI to exploit vulnerabilities, sharpen social engineering, and accelerate the speed of attacks.

Collaboration, the thinking factory and digital transformation Francisco Almada Lobo, Chief Executive Officer and Co-founder and Jeff Winter, Vice President, Business Strategy, both at Critical Manufacturing, provide some great insights as to the themes covered at the company’s recent MES and Industry 4.0 International Summit – with AI front and centre, alongside the introduction of the ‘thinking factory’ concept, software-defined manufacturing, the importance of unified data strategies and modern architectures and perhaps the key message: collaboration is key when it comes to digital transformation.